Thirty Years – 1922-1952
The Story of the Communist Movement in Canada

CHAPTER SEVEN: A New Stage of Political Development

WHEN Mr. Justice Wright sentenced its leaders to imprisonment
in November, 1931, the Communist Party of Canada was
ten years old. It had led every progressive current in the
Canadian labor movement throughout those ten years. Indeed, with
the sole exception of the Canadian Labor Party, the Communists
had initiated all the progressive movements and organized
the early activities in support of them. Our party initiated and
led to success the struggle against the ivory-tower sectarian
isolation from the masses of the workers that had characterized
the Socialist Party of Canada. Our Party initiated and led to
victory the nation-wide campaign against the tradition of secession
which had made two eneyations of militant workers politically
sterile. In place of the false theory that secession from
the craft unions was the hallmark of militancy, our party had
won recognition of the fact that the place for a militant worker
is in the union that is genuinely supported by the masses of
his fellow-workers. The great "back-to-the-unions" movement
led by our party had healed the catastrophic O.B.U. split and
re-united the labor movement. Our party, along with the Trade
Union Educational League and later the Workers' Unity League,
had initiated and led the struggles for industrial unionism
and to organize the unorganized. By its consistent battle
for the Canadian Labor Defence League, our party had won
recognition throughout the working-class movement of the
necessity for organized labor defence.

The political advance that the working class made in those
struggles was not always evident at the time. When the advance
did become evident it appeared to be scattered. Basically,
however, those progressive activities worked a profound change in
the labor movement. Step by step the Communists led the
progressive workers forward along the historic path of
working-class political development to mass understanding of the fact
that, created by modern industry as a class by itself, the
working class must become a class for itself; that the working class
must consciously engage in the struggle to raise itself up from
the position of an oppressed and exploited class to the position
of the leading, ruling class in society.

Along with its fight for labor unity and independent working-class
political action the party had initiated activities which
mobilized tens of thousands of farmers on the Prairies in
organized struggle against the ruthless exploitation of
monopoly-capital and the cynical disregard of Liberal and Tory
governments. The campaign led by the party and the Farmers' Unity
League halted the ruthless sweep of foreclosures, sheriffs' sales
and evictions. In the process it raised farmers' action on the
Prairies to a new high level, arousing tens of thousands of poor
farmers to recognition of the need for united farmer-labor
political action.

The organization of unemployed workers on a national scale
by the Workers' Unity League, the co-ordination of their struggles
for survival and the great campaign for the Party's National
Non-Contributory Unemployment Insurance Bill, were reaching
a new high level when the Bennett government loosed the
nation-wide R.C.M.P. raids and attempted to stamp out the
growing radicalization of the workers and farmers by the use
of the courts. The government failed to accomplish its purpose,
however. It was precisely when capitalist law was exposed as
an instrument for the suppression of working-class ideas and
activities that the accumulated ideological results of the preceding
decade of party work crystallized. Popular revulsion
against the fascist methods of the Tory governments and the
catastrophic effects of the economic crisis combined to create a
situation characterized by the fact that the Canadian Labor
Defence League secured 483,000 signatures to its second petition
for the release of the eight Communists and repeal of Section 98.
This is not to suggest that all the people who signed
the C.L.D.L. petition necessarily agreed with the Communist
Party. A large number of them certainly did agree with the
growing demand for a national program of great public works,
to employ 200,000 Canadians improving Canada, and the
demand for such a program had been initiated by our party.
But, the decisive fact in connection with the enormous number
of people who supported the C.L.D.L. petition was that they
illustrated the widespread and acute dissatisfaction with the
Tory government; indeed, those signatures testified to the
measure in which elements of disintegration were developing
within the two old parties of the capitalist class.

The Communist Party being outlawed, bourgeois politicians
and social reformists seized upon the possibility presented by
the widespread radicalization of workers, farmers and urban
middle-class people.

During the year after the Bennett government banned the
Communist Party, a conference of social democrats and leaders
of farm organizations, held in Calgary, planned the organization
of a new reformist party. Shortly afterwards H. H. Stevens,
the minister of trade and commerce in Bennett's cabinet,
utilized the popularity he had achieved by his sponsorship of the
inquiry into cost-spreads and mass buying to organize a political
party of his own, under the name of the National Reconstruction
Party. Simultaneously, there emerged in Alberta a
provincial party under the name and pretending to the
philosophy of Social Credit. In the Province of Quebec, Paul Gouin,
the son of Sir Lomer Gouin, long-time Liberal boss in that
province, split the provincial Liberal Party and organized a
movement of dissidents under the name of L'Action Liberale.
Gouin pretended to progressive aims but in effect, the function
of L'Action Liberale was to provide the means whereby some
Quebec "Liberals" could merge with Duplessis.

In the federal elections held during October, 1935, more
than a million of those who went to the polls voted for
candidates other than those of the Liberal and Tory parties. Because
the disintegrating influences affected mainly the Tory party,
the Bennett government was the loser and the Liberals were
returned to power.

The actual competition between Liberals and Tories in that,
as in all elections, was solely as to which party could serve
Canadian capitalism best. There was no difference in their attitudes
towards the profit system. Such superficial difference as
appeared between the attitude of the two parties towards the
working class was the difference between Bennett's practice of
the "iron heel" and King's promise of a velvet glove. At the
same time, the defeat of the Bennett government was a setback
for the most reactionary forces in Canada and the fact that a
million (twenty-two percent) of all those who voted opposed
both old parties was a serious warning to the victorious Liberals.
Mackenzie King's repeal of Section 98 during the first
session of the new parliament was a tacit admission of that fact.
The monopoly of the two old parties had been broken: the new
government was, for the time being at least, compelled to listen
to the voice of the people.

* * *

Because the C.C.F. marked the establishment of a national
social-democratic party politically identical with the social-democratic
parties in Europe, its foundation was of special
importance to the working class and, therefore, to the Communist Party.

It was a very important stage of the historic struggle of the
workers and poor farmers to free themselves from the political
tutelage of the capitalist class. Objectively the emergence of the
C.C.F. was a result of the work of the Communist Party --
indeed it testified to the effectiveness of its work. Dialectically
it was an integral part of the evolutionary process in which the
working class learns by its own experience that only its own
party, based unequivocally upon the historical destiny of the
working class, will lead it to victory.

A very large proportion of the men and women who
participated in the foundation of the C.C.F. had that process in
mind at the time -- a much larger proportion than is generally
realized. That they supported the establishment of a social-democratic
party, the leaders of which refused to identify it
directly with the aim of socialism, does not contradict their
general socialist aspirations. In the conditions prevailing in
Canada at that time, and the level of political development
corresponding as it did with the relative youth of Canadian
capitalism, it was inevitable that the first mass popular
breakaway from capitalist politics should be of such a character.
The fact that, turning away from the Liberal and Conservative
parties, they established a radical reform party which "extended
its hand," as it were, to the masses of workers who
aspired to a socialist re-organization of Canada, made the
foundation of the C.C.F. a development of tremendous
importance. The law of working-class political growth makes
it a stage in the advance of the working class to recognition of
the historical necessity for Communist policies.

Along with large numbers of socialist-minded workers and
farmers the foundation of the C.C.F. attracted wide circles of
reform-minded people who, without definitely supporting
socialism, recognized some of the evils of capitalism and
wanted action to mitigate them. The Communist Party of
Canada wanted to cooperate with all such democratic people
even if such cooperation had to be limited only to the amelioration
of the most pressing, immediate effects of the crisis. The
Communist Party was fighting for what the majority of them
aspired to. The attitude of the Party towards the C.C.F.
movement was stated on behalf of the National Committee of
the Party by Tim Buck in a public address delivered in
Massey Hall in Toronto, early in 1935, to open the party's
campaign for the federal general elections to be held that year.
In the course of his address, Tim Buck explained the attitude
described above, and appealed to the C.C.F. leadership and
members to join in a united front effort to ensure one labor or
farmer candidate in each constituency in the forthcoming
election. He pointed out that the conditions created by the
splits in the old parties and the organizations of the new ones
made it possible that an electoral united front of the C.C.F.
and the Communist Party could rally the farm and labor
movements to such an extent as to elect a farmer-labor government.

In addition to public proposals for electoral cooperation
the Communist Party addressed a letter to the C.C.F. leadership
setting forth specific proposals for an exchange of views
concerning the possibility of cooperation and the means by
which it could be made effective. The National Council of the
C.C.F. rejected the proposal for electoral cooperation; instead
it plunged into a campaign of violent propaganda against the
C.P., the Soviet Union and all proposals that suggested a united
front against monopoly capitalism. All its efforts to bring
about electoral unity being rejected by the C.C.F. leadership,
the Communist Party entered the federal elections with its
own candidates and election platform. To limit electoral
conflict between the party and the C.C.F. as much as possible,
only nine candidates were nominated. The party's federal
election program, of which 150,000 copies were distributed,
was built around the following eight points:

THE COMMUNIST ELECTION PROGRAM1. Immediate enactment of genuine unemployment and social insurance
at the expense of the rich, as embodied in the Worker's Bill,
pending which unemployed relief to be paid at the rates of benefit
provided in this bill.
2. To prevent further attacks upon the living standards of the
masses, rising prices resulting from monopoly and inflation, wage cuts,
relief cuts; to abolish sweat-shops and forced labor; to win higher
wages, shorter hours, and improved working conditions. To prohibit
all evictions and forced sales of workers' homes for debts or arrears in
taxes. To prevent the railway amalgamation scheme of big capital.
3. Repeal of the Natural Products Marketing Act and the Farm
Creditors' Arrangement Act. Provision of emergency relief for all
needy and drought-stricken farmers. Long-term farm credits at low
interest. Cancellation of mortgages and debts of impoverished farmers.
Prevention of the forced sale of farms, the seizure of crops and the
forced collection of rent and taxes. Immediate enactment of the Farm
Emergency Bill.
4. Repeal of Section 98. No utilization of police and militia against
struggles of workers and farmers. Prevention of the deportation and
oppression of foreign-born workers. Prevention and repeal of all
measures restricting trade union rights. Prohibition of company unions.
Maintenance of the right of workers to join the union of their choice,
to strike, to picket and demonstrate without restriction. Immediate
release of all workers imprisoned for labor activities.
5. Prevention by united mass struggle of the imperialist designs to
hurl the Canadian masses into the imminent imperialist war. Prevention
of the shipment of war materials to Japan and Germany. Against
all war preparations and the war provocations of Canadian imperialism
against the Soviet Union. Establishment of full diplomatic and
trade relations with the Soviet Union. Support of the Soviet Union's
peace policy. Defence of the Soviet Union and Soviet China(1) against
imperialist attacks.
6. Immediate payment of all veterans' pensions, restoration of
cancelled pensions, and free medical attention for all veterans.
7. Abolition of the sales tax; abolition of all taxes on necessities of
life and on persons or the property of persons earning less than $3,000
per year; steeply graduated taxation on the rich.
8 Cancellation of the war-and-forced-labor building program of
the Bennett government; commencement of a billion-dollar building
program at trade union wages, to clear the slums, build workers'
homes, schools, hospitals and other works for the workers and farmers.

The party's proposal for electoral cooperation with the
C.C.F. was reiterated in the following words:

"The Communist Election Committee proposes a united front of the
C.C.F. and the Communist Party in the coming federal elections on the
basis of the common economic and political interests of the masses in
this fight. The Communist Election Committee calls for unity in
struggle for the needs of the masses -- unity against the Liberal and
Conservative parties of big capital -- unity for the election of a
substantial number of Communist and C.C.F. candidates, who are pledged
to the line of daily, united struggle against hunger, fascism and war."

The aggregate vote cast for the party's candidates in the
elections was 21,000. Its significance was greater than its numbers,
however. The party was illegal, the electorate was
subjected to systematic anti-Communist propaganda, the C,C.F.
leaders and most of the C.C.F. candidates exerted more efforts
against the party than against the capitalist parties. While seeking
to bring about a united front between the Communist
Party and the C.C.F. it was necessary, during the infancy of the
C.C.F., as today, for the Communist Party to carry on a
consistent struggle against the illusion that the battle against
monopoly-capitalism can be won by the policies and the
methods pursued by the leadership of the C.C.F. Then as now
it was necessary to expose and combat the anti-working-class
ideology of the C.C.F. leaders. The "organized confusion" of
their policies and propaganda tended to delude uncritical
supporters into the idea that it was some sort of a new, easy,
Canadian path to socialism. They calculatingly sidetracked the
majority of delegates in the constituent convention from
proclaiming socialism to be its goal. They aimed to make of the
C.C.F. a revival of the opportunistic petty-bourgeois social
reformism that had marked labor parliamentarism up to the
end of the First World War, to make it the third party of
bourgeois politics in Canada -- sharing the parliamentary field with
the two old parties. The source of that aim and the consequent
role played by the C.C.F. leadership since, of a buffer
between the working class and the capitalist class, was fully
explained at the time of its foundation by Stewart Smith in his
book Socialism and the C.C.F.(2)

Even if Stewart Smith's book had never been written, the
keynote speech submitted to the Regina convention by J. S.
Woodsworth was full and conclusive evidence of the determination
of its sponsors that the C.C.F. should not be a working-class
party, and that it should not be committed to the aim of
socialism. To mollify the large and enthusiastic left wing at
the convention, Mr. Woodsworth explained his opposition to
the word "socialism" or "socialist" in the name of the new
party as follows: "Socialism has so many variations that we
hesitate to use the class name." In the rest of his speech, he made it
quite definite that the reason for not including the word socialism
was not the "variations" but its class meaning. The dominant
group at the foundation of the C.C.F. repudiated the word
"socialism" precisely because it had become identified with
the aspirations of the working class.

J. S. Woodsworth, whose memory is honored by the working-class
movement because of his loyalty to progressive principles
as he understood them, did not misrepresent his position. His
aim was a reform party -- a party which could secure support
from sections of the capitalist class, from well-to-do farmers and
urban middle-class people, and from some workers. He did
not pretend that he advocated socialism. His political philosophy
was summed up in the following sentences which he repeated
hundreds of times: "The state should own and control
certain essential public utilities. That is all."(3) He often used
the terms "cooperation," "planning," "public ownership," as
though they were all synonymous with socialism. He did not
differentiate between public ownership such as that of the
Canadian National Railways, which was established solely to
guarantee an undiminishing flow of unearned income to the
capitalist class at the expense of the masses of the people, and
genuine public ownership, exemplified in the Soviet Union,
which puts an end to unearned increment and assures that all
the advantages of ownership accrue to the community. He even
welcomed as "advance along socialistic lines,"(4) the report
submitted to the government by Sir Lyman Duff, later chief justice
of Canada, recommending amalgamation of the Canadian
National Railways and the Canadian Pacific Railway in a
manner that would have established a C.P.R. monopoly of
railroad transportation.

The real character of that proposal was described in the
condemnation of it published by the Central Committee of the
Communist Party, characterized by the following quotation:

"Our country stands before a new attack on the welfare of the
people. Powerful financial and industrial interests headed by Sir
Edward Beatty, president of the C.P.R., are preparing to fasten a
gigantic railroad monopoly on the people of Canada.
"The proposals of Sir Edward Beatty are being supported by the
reactionary press all over Canada. Cynical admissions are made by
Sir Edward Beatty to the effect that the unification of the two railway
systems will mean a reduction of staff, Every honest observer admits
that if unification goes through to its final aim, complete
amalgamation, from 30,000 to 40,000 railway workers will be discarded.
"The Communist Party, through its Dominion Committee now in
session, declares its complete accord with the railway unions, and
great sections of the Canadian people, in saying: This reactionary plot
against the Canadian people must be foiled!."

Mr. Woodsworth stated his attitude towards finance-capital in
the following words: "We are not advocating the immediate
taking over of the banks, but we are advocating a central bank
which will control credit and currency. This will prevent
credit being extended at one time when it is not needed, and
refused at times, like these, when it is urgently needed."(5)

How little of socialism there was in that proposal of the leader
of the C.C.F. was proved two years later when the Tory government,
headed by the crass reactionary Bennett, established a
central bank, the Bank of Canada, to perform exactly the
functions that Mr. Woodsworth had advocated as a solution for all
financial ills. Unfortunately for the workers and farmers and
small-business people, it gave no protection whatsoever to them.
Contrary to the easy but unfounded assurances given by Mr.
Woodsworth, it facilitated the extension of credit when that
suited monopoly-capital, and it ensured even more drastic
curtailment of credit and consequent refusal when the need of
small-business people was desperate. Contrary to the assurances
of Mr. Woodsworth, the central bank provided protection only
for the capitalist banking system.

That particular example of C.C.F. policies is especially
important today because the national leaders of the C.C.F. have
refused to learn from experience. They still reject the idea
of nationalizing the banking system and its function of creating
credit. Indeed, they have made repudiation of the aim of
nationalizing the chartered banks an expressly written part of
C.C.F. policy.

Mr. Woodsworth did not misrepresent his political creed but
the more hard-boiled right-wing social democrats around him
were, and are, frequently, less honest in their declarations. One
of the most serious crimes committed against the Canadian
working class has been their deliberate "behind the barn"
cultivation of the lie that their term "cooperative commonwealth"
is synonymous with socialism, while systematically pursuing
policies which support monopoly-capitalism against the
working class. Occasionally they qualify their pretence concerning
the meaning of "cooperative commonwealth" by explaining
that their aim is "Canadian socialism." By that trick they
compound their treachery. They set the workers under their influence
against socialism by instilling into their thinking the
completely false idea that socialism is a matter of national
taste instead of the abolition of capitalist exploitation. That sort
of unprincipled deception is illustrated today by the contrast
between the aims and policies to which the C.C.F. was
supposedly dedicated by its Regina Manifesto, and the aims and
policy to which it is committed in practice by its national
leaders. For example, the Regina Manifesto declared:

"We stand resolutely against all participation in imperialist wars....
Canadians must refuse to be entangled in any more wars fought to
make the world safe for capitalism."

Such is the position which is presented to rank-and-file workers
as the C.C.F. attitude towards peace and war. What is the
real policy now being pursued by the national leadership? It is
one of complete and unconditional support of the actions of the
St. Laurent government in its preparation for an aggressive
imperialist war - "to make the world safe for capitalism."

(1)
Following the Great March of the Red Army, a hundred million people in China had
established Soviet Governments in their districts.